In a rare crackdown on a concentrated area, Iranian authorities have arrested Christians living in the country’s third largest city in what is seen as a tactic to discourage Muslims and converts to Christianity from attending official churches.
Lawyers for an Iranian pastor awaiting a final decision on his death sentence have not received communication from authorities that their client will be executed, despite reports that his death is imminent. Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence has ordered the last two officially registered churches holding Friday Farsi-language services in Tehran to discontinue them. 
Iranian authorities this week arrested Christian converts from Islam while they were meeting for worship at a home in the southern city of Shiraz, according to sources. Iranian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani has to serve at least one more year in prison before he may be executed for refusing to abandon his faith in Christ and return to Islam, an official assisting him has said. A jailed pastor of one of Iran’s largest evangelical house church movements remains “strong in his faith” in Christ, despite facing execution before Christmas for refusing to return to Islam. 
Militants with suspected ties to Iranian security forces have threatened to kill nearly a dozen evangelical Christians who fled Iran unless they “repent” and return to Islam. After he became a Christian in the Netherlands, as well as getting free from drugs, Abrahamian returned to Iran to work with drug users. Eleven members of one of Iran’s largest evangelical house church movements, who were charged with ‘action against the order of the country’ and drinking alcohol, have been acquitted by an Iranian court, BosNewsLife learned Friday, May 20. Five detained members of one of Iran’s largest house church movements were to face a trial Monday, April 5, on charges of “blasphemy” which carries the death penalty in this strict Islamic nation.